When you weren't looking she would slip out of the room on to the landing to the head of the stairs, and stand there, vexed and bewildered when you caught her.
IX.
Mamma was not well enough now to get up and be dressed. They had moved her into Papa's room. It was bright all morning with the sun. She was happy there. She remembered the yellow furniture. She was back in the old bedroom at Five Elms.
Mamma lay in the big bed, waiting for you to brush her hair. She was playing with her white flannel dressing jacket, spread out before her on the counterpane, ready. She talked to herself.
"Lindley Vickers—Vickers Lindley."
But she was not thinking of Lindley Vickers; she was thinking of Dan, trying to get back to Dan.
"Is Jenny there? Tell her to go and see what Master Roddy's doing." She thought Catty was Jenny…. "Has Dan come in?"
Sometimes it would be Papa; but not often; she soon left him for Dan and
Roddy.
Always Dan and Roddy. And never Mark.
Never Mark and never Mary. Had she forgotten Mark or did she remember him too well? Or was she afraid to remember? Supposing there was a black hole in her mind where Mark's death was, and another black hole where Mary had been? Had she always held you together in her mind so that you went down together? Did she hold you together now, in some time and place safer than memory?